At NRO Chris Horner documents the total Obama focus, not on fixing the oil spill in the Gulf, but on using the crisis to pass a tax on energy.

...today Roll Call reports (subscription required) that during today’s White House meeting — called by the president to try and advance his global-warming agenda by using the Gulf spill as the tail to wag that otherwise dead dog — Obama accused Tennessee senator Lamar Alexander of raising a “talking point” by seeking to discuss response measures the government might employ in the Gulf, and went on to say that the oil spill was not the topic of the meeting.

Remember, the point of the meeting was supposed to be how to pass a spill-response bill, though the substance was revealed to be how to use the Gulf spill to pass a global-warming bill calling it a spill-response bill.

Is there anything more bloodless, more ruthless, more cynical than using the fact that the Gulf coast is being polluted and people are losing their jobs, businesses and homes to pass a piece of legislation that does not even tangentially address the problem. Obama is using the spill to advance a Fascist socialist agenda. This is reminiscent of Stalin's forced famine policies in the Ukraine that cost seven millions their lives as he pushed for collective farms. I don't want to, but I firmly believe that if Obama had the power he would do exactly the same thing. So far his regime has prevented foreign ships and companies from aiding in the clean-up effort. This is similar to Stalin's cordon around the Ukraine to prevent food from getting in a people were dying of hunger.

Keep this in mind when we hear about Obama's "concern" about the oil spill. The news media were complicit in covering up Stalin's famine policy. When Stalin arrested British engineers and put them on trial:

Journalists were warned they would be shut out of the trial completely if they wrote news stories about the famine. Most of the foreign press corp yielded to the Soviet demand and either didn't cover the famine or wrote stories sympathetic to the official Soviet propaganda line that it didn't exist. Among those was Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Walter Duranty of the New York Times who sent one dispatch stating "...all talk of famine now is ridiculous."

If this sounds familiar, remember that CNN covered up the atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein so that they could continue to "report" from Saddam's Iraq. The MFM are so far in the tank for Obama and his agenda that they will say and do anything to prop him up.

Apparently the EPA demands that the cleanup be perfect, or not done at all.

Why does neither the U.S. government nor U.S. energy companies have on hand the cleanup technology available in Europe? Ironically, the superior European technology runs afoul of U.S. environmental rules. The voracious Dutch vessels, for example, continuously suck up vast quantities of oily water, extract most of the oil and then spit overboard vast quantities of nearly oil-free water. Nearly oil-free isn't good enough for the U.S. regulators, who have a standard of 15 parts per million -- if water isn't at least 99.9985% pure, it may not be returned to the Gulf of Mexico.

When ships in U.S. waters take in oil-contaminated water, they are forced to store it. As U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, the official in charge of the clean-up operation, explained in a press briefing on June 11, "We have skimmed, to date, about 18 million gallons of oily water--the oil has to be decanted from that [and] our yield is usually somewhere around 10% or 15% on that." In other words, U.S. ships have mostly been removing water from the Gulf, requiring them to make up to 10 times as many trips to storage facilities where they off-load their oil-water mixture, an approach Koops calls "crazy."

The Americans, overwhelmed by the catastrophic consequences of the BP spill, finally relented and took the Dutch up on their offer -- but only partly. Because the U.S. didn't want Dutch ships working the Gulf, the U.S. airlifted the Dutch equipment to the Gulf and then retrofitted it to U.S. vessels. And rather than have experienced Dutch crews immediately operate the oil-skimming equipment, to appease labour unions the U.S. postponed the clean-up operation to allow U.S. crews to be trained.

A catastrophe that could have been averted is now playing out.

There is an old saying that the perfect is the enemy of the good. I never thought in my wildest dreams that something this bizarre would be done by the government. The Gulf oil spill is setting records for government ineptitude. If Obama were deliberately trying to make the government look bad, he could not be doing a better job.
H/T Glenn

Is working for the government the new "lottery winner?" Victor Davis Hanson makes the case.

There is a growing sense that government is what I would call a new sort of Versailles — a vast cadre of royal state and federal workers that apparently assumes immunity from the laws of economics that affect everyone else.

In the olden days, we the public sort of expected that the L.A. Unified School District paid the best and got the worst results. We knew that you didn’t show up at the DMV if you could help it. A trip to the emergency room was to descend into Dante’s Inferno. We accepted all that in other words, and went on with our business.

But at some point — perhaps triggered by the radical increase in the public sector under Obama, the militancy of the SEIU, or the staggering debts — the public snapped and has had it with whining union officials and their political enablers who always threaten to cut off police and fire protection if we object that there are too many unproductive, unnecessary, but too highly paid employees at the Social Service office. In short, sometime in the last ten years public employees were directly identified with most of what is now unsustainable in the U.S. The old idea that a public servant gave up a competitive salary for job security was redefined as hitting the jackpot.

The anger of the Tea Parties comes from the people in the middle. The rich are inulated from the financial troubles as are the poor who have nothing to lose. It is those in the middle, who saved and played by the rules; the middle who in our society possess - in aggregate - most of the country's wealth, who are paying for the sins of the rich and the poor.

Emblematic of the anger at both top and bottom was the 2008 meltdown: those who had not played by the rules still got their mortgages, then defaulted, and left the taxpayer with their bills; those who made the loans and profited without risk took the bailout money, and left us with the cleanup. Those in between with underwater mortgages and higher taxes pay the tab.

There is a feeling, which I share, that new taxes will not solve the real problems of public debt and crumbling infrastructure.

There is a sense of futility: new higher taxes won’t lower the deficit and won’t improve infrastructure or public service. Much of it will go to redistributive plans that, the middle believes, will only, fairly or not, acerbate social problems. In California there is a sense (born out by statistics) that we lack a civil and humane public culture brought on by two often neglected facts: a small cadre of overpaid public employees ensures that we don’t have the money for continuance of basic public services; and, second, we feel our tax money is going to redistributive entitlements rather than focused on improving a collapsing infrastructure of dams, canals, freeways, airports, and trains.

The freefall in the polls that Obama has experienced is the result of the fact that ...

Prophets fall harder, especially when “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for” prove to be a reflective of the Chicago way, the snooty ineptness of the Harvard lounge, and the shrill leftism of SEIU.

Rangel, Dodd, Geithner, the Blago mess, the lobbyists, the earmarks, and the political bribes to pass health care together have convinced half the electorate in just a few months that Obama is not merely not a reformer, but perhaps the most ethically compromised president since Bill Clinton or Richard Nixon.

Mark Steyn visits a Jewish cemetery in Tangiers. What he discovers there is disturbing in so many ways. He describes the neglected and trash-strewn area.

It’s prime real estate, with a magnificent view of the Mediterranean, if you don’t mind the trash and the stench and the chickenshit, and you tiptoe cautiously around the broken glass.

And reminds us of the fact that Jews are being driven out of their ancient homes.

By 2005, there were fewer than 150 Jews in Tangiers, almost all of them very old. By 2015, it is estimated that there will be precisely none. Whenever I mention such statistics to people, the reaction is a shrug: why would Jews live in Morocco anyway? But in 1945 there were some 300,000 in this country. Today some 3,000 Jews remain—i.e., about one per cent of what was once a large and significant population. That would be an unusual demographic reconfiguration in most countries: imagine if Canada’s francophone population or Inuit population were today one per cent of what it was in 1945. But it’s not unusual for Jews. There are cemeteries like that on the rue du Portugal all over the world, places where once were Jews and now are none. I mentioned only last week that in the twenties, Baghdad was 40 per cent Jewish. But you could just as easily cite Czernowitz in the Bukovina, now part of Ukraine. “There is not a shop that has not a Jewish name painted above its windows,” wrote Sir Sacheverell Sitwell, visiting the city in 1937. Not today. As in Tangiers, the “community” resides in the cemetery.

Virulent anti-Semitism is a global phenomenon, indulged in by some of our "leading lights," people who have prizes attached to their names; people like Helen Thomas.

In 1936, during the Cable Street riots, the British Union of Fascists jeered at London Jews, “Go back to Palestine!”, “Palestine” being in those days the designation for the Jewish homeland. Last week, Helen Thomas, the doyenne of the White House press corps, jeered at today’s Jews, “Get the hell out of Palestine,” “Palestine” being now the designation for the land illegally occupied by the Jewish apartheid state. “Go home,” advised Miss Thomas, “to Poland and Germany.” Wherever a Jew is, whatever a Jew is, he should be something else somewhere else. And then he can be hated for that, too.

It's a view Obama shares, but is too polite to mention it in quite that way.

The “Palestinian question” is a land dispute, but not in the sense of a boundary-line argument between two Ontario farmers. Rather, it represents the coming together of two psychoses. Islam is a one-way street. Once you’re in the Dar al-Islam, that’s it; there’s no checkout desk. They take land, they hold it, forever.

That’s why, in his first post-9/11 message to the troops, Osama droned on about the fall of Andalusia: it’s been half a millennium, but he still hasn’t gotten over it, and so, a couple of years ago, when I was at the Pentagon being shown some of the maps found in al-Qaeda safe houses, “the new caliphate” had Spain and India being re-incorporated within the Muslim world. If that’s how you think, no wonder a tiny little sliver of a Jewish state smack dab in the heart of the Dar al-Islam drives you nuts: to accept Israel’s “right to exist” would be as unthinkable as accepting a re-Christianized Constantinople.

Somehow the Jewish community's best friends are found in the evangelical Christian community; a community that's under attack by Jewish spokesmen as their coreligionists are being destroyed by their political "friends" and allies.

Gaspard, a top Obama advisory has direct ties to the corrupt ACORN organization:

Critics also accuse the Working Families Party of having a long association with the troubled activist group, ACORN. Bertha Lewis, ACORN's CEO, is one of the party's co-founders. The New York Times reported this month that "Patrick Gaspard, the White House political director, worked with ACORN in New York to set up the Working Families political party and sat on the party's board with Ms. Lewis."

On the day President Obama was elected, armed men wearing the black berets and jackboots of the New Black Panther Party were stationed at the entrance to a polling place in Philadelphia. They brandished a weapon and intimidated voters and poll watchers. After the election, the Justice Department brought a voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party and those armed thugs. I and other Justice attorneys diligently pursued the case and obtained an entry of default after the defendants ignored the charges. Before a final judgment could be entered in May 2009, our superiors ordered us to dismiss the case.

The New Black Panther case was the simplest and most obvious violation of federal law I saw in my Justice Department career. Because of the corrupt nature of the dismissal, statements falsely characterizing the case and, most of all, indefensible orders for the career attorneys not to comply with lawful subpoenas investigating the dismissal, this month I resigned my position as a Department of Justice (DOJ) attorney....

The assistant attorney general for civil rights, Tom Perez, has testified repeatedly that the "facts and law" did not support this case. That claim is false. If the actions in Philadelphia do not constitute voter intimidation, it is hard to imagine what would, short of an actual outbreak of violence at the polls. Let's all hope this administration has not invited that outcome through the corrupt dismissal.

Most corrupt of all, the lawyers who ordered the dismissal - Loretta King, the Obama-appointed acting head of the Civil Rights Division, and Steve Rosenbaum - did not even read the internal Justice Department memorandums supporting the case and investigation. Just as Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. admitted that he did not read the Arizona immigration law before he condemned it, Mr. Rosenbaum admitted that he had not bothered to read the most important department documents detailing the investigative facts and applicable law in the New Black Panther case. Christopher Coates, the former Voting Section chief, was so outraged at this dereliction of responsibility that he actually threw the memos at Mr. Rosenbaum in the meeting where they were discussing the dismissal of the case. The department subsequently removed all of Mr. Coates' responsibilities and sent him to South Carolina....

Most disturbing, the dismissal is part of a creeping lawlessness infusing our government institutions. Citizens would be shocked to learn about the open and pervasive hostility within the Justice Department to bringing civil rights cases against nonwhite defendants on behalf of white victims. Equal enforcement of justice is not a priority of this administration. Open contempt is voiced for these types of cases.

Some of my co-workers argued that the law should not be used against black wrongdoers because of the long history of slavery and segregation. Less charitable individuals called it "payback time." Incredibly, after the case was dismissed, instructions were given that no more cases against racial minorities like the Black Panther case would be brought by the Voting Section.

TOM SMITH: “This is really bad. I know it’s a cliche by now, but if anything remotely like this had happened in the Bush administration, every legal worthy you can think of would be on about it, and rightly, until no one could stand it anymore.”

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Is the Obama Administration deliberately making the effects of the oil spill worse?

There’s simply no other way to explain the administration’s refusal, rather than mere inability, to come to grips with the spill. They see it as an opportunity, and Rahm has already signalled that in the upcoming elections, the Dems intend to run against BP, despite their own links with the company that was going to save the world.

At some point ineptitude is no longer believable and sabotage is suspected.

The federal government has shut down the dredging that was being done to create protective sand berms in the Gulf of Mexico.

The berms are meant to protect the Louisiana coastline from oil. But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department has concerns about where the dredging is being done. The department says one area where sand is being dredged is a sensitive section of the Chandeleur Islands, and the state failed to meet an extended deadline to install pipe that would draw sand from a less-endangered area.

Let's see, if dredging stops the endangered wildlife will be covered in oil. Does Fish & Wildlife prefer that answer?

I’m starting to get the feeling that President Obama is no workaholic. His much trumpeted “War on Petroleum” speech in the Oval Office last week fell flat to most listeners, regardless of political affiliation, because our “genius”, Harvard educated President made it clear to the entire world that he knew less about the Gulf spill than the average 10th grader.

What has this man been doing with his time for the past two months?

Well, there's golf, rock concerts, date nights and state dinners with Mexican presidents. I mean, how much more does he want him to do?

Ann Coulter remarking on a NY Times "story" (actually a editorial for Kagan)

In The New York Times' profile on the family of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, her aunt was quoted as saying: "There was thinking, always thinking" at the family's dinner table. "Nothing was sacrosanct."

Really? Nothing was sacrosanct? Because in my experience, on a scale of 1-to-infinity, the range of acceptable opinion among New York liberals goes from 1-to-1.001.

When liberals say, "nothing is sacrosanct," they mean "nothing other Americans consider sacrosanct is sacrosanct." They demonstrate their open-mindedness by ridiculing other people's dogma, but will not brook the most trifling criticism of their own dogmas. ...

With that in mind, here are some questions it would be fun to ask a New York liberal like Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan at her hearings next week:

-- Roughly one-third of Americans are Evangelical Christians. Do you personally know any Evangelical Christians? Name two.

-- In 1972, Richard Nixon was elected president with more than 60 percent of the vote, winning every state except Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. How many people do you know who voted for Nixon?

-- Appropriate or inappropriate: Schools passing out condoms to seventh-graders? Schools passing out cigarettes to seventh-graders?

-- Who is a greater threat to America, Sarah Palin or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

In a bizarre statement to police, the Oregon woman who claims that Al Gore fondled and groped her during a massage session described the former Vice President as a giggling "crazed sex poodle" who gave a "come hither" look before pouncing on her in a Portland hotel suite.

Portland police looked the other way. (Gee, I wonder if it had anything to dowith politics?)

This numbr will go higher. In view of the actions of Congress and Obama, it's a wonder it isn't a majority yet.

Rasmussen:

Nearly half of American Adults see the government today as a threat to individual rights rather than a protector of those rights.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 48% of Adults see the government today as a threat to rights. Thirty-seven percent (37%) hold the opposite view. Fifteen percent (15%) are undecided.

This freak show brought to you by the most inept bumbler ever to be elected to public office.

Team Obama trying to "plug the damn hole."

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Tens of thousands of gallons more oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday after an undersea robot bumped a venting system, forcing BP to remove the cap that had been containing some of the crude.

The setback, yet another in the nine-week effort to stop the gusher, came as thick pools of oil washed up on Pensacola Beach in Florida and the Obama administration tried to figure out how to resurrect a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling.

"Ms. Kagan has not had the time to develop a mature philosophy of judging," said Bork in a conference call organized by Americans United for Life.

"It is typical of young lawyers going into constitutional law that they have inflated dreams of what constitutional law can do and what courts can do," Bork said. "That’s the danger of Ms. Kagan that she hasn’t had any experience that would lead her to mellow…the academia is not a place where you use prudence and caution and other virtues of a judge."

And ...

“The one thing the republicans would gain by making an issue of the Kagan hearings is a little integrity for future battles,” he said when asked whether Republicans should make an effort to take issue with Kagan’s confirmation. He added that the Republicans would lose "their reputation for rolling over any time a woman or a liberal is nominated."

The sky is filled with star trails around the north celestial pole. A reflection of the Earth's daily rotation on its axis, star trails are familiar to photographers who fix their camera to a tripod and make long exposures of the night sky. But the imposing forms gazing skyward probably look strange to many denizens of Earth. Found on the Canary Island of Tenerife, they are red tajinastes, rare flowering plants that grow to a height of up to 3 meters.

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

AL GORE has been accused of sexually attacking a masseuse in Portland, Oregon - and is named in the official police report about the alleged assault, The ENQUIRER has learned exclusively!

The bombshell story will appear in the new issue of The ENQUIRER and will include the secret police documents, a photo of the woman making the stunning charges and will reveal the shocking details about the pants she saved as evidence!

Our investigative team uncovered the amazing story just weeks after the former Vice President announced that he and wife TIPPER were ending their 40-year marriage - amidst reports she suspected her husband was involved with "a gorgeous massage therapist."

We have verified the 62-year-old former VP was in Portland at the time of the alleged incident - Oct. 24, 2006 - and we saw the $540 massage bill.

Earlier today, the “little people” of the Gulf coast—those who live and work in coastal Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida and who have come to depend on off-shore drilling for their very survival—won a significant victory in federal court. Who was their legal adversary? The federal government. ...

So the little people decided to fight back. Several owners of small companies who provide a myriad of services to support offshore drilling in the Gulf, including those who ferry people and supplies to offshore oil rigs, went to federal court to enjoin the federal government from enforcing what they saw as an arbitrarily imposed moratorium. Today, they won. Detailing the economic harm to local businesses and employees that the moratorium would cause, U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman issued a preliminary injunction against the moratorium, which he described as “generic, indeed punitive”:

Some of the plaintiffs’ contracts have been affected; the Court is persuaded that it is only a matter of time before more business and jobs and livelihoods will be lost. The [federal government] trivialize[s] such losses by characterizing them as merely a small percentage of the drilling rigs affected, but it does not follow that this will somehow reduce the convincing harm suffered.

Perhaps demonstrating that it is even more tone deaf than BP’s chairman, the White House swiftly promised to appeal the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

It was there the last time Google cache took a screen shot of it (June 18th), so it was scrubbed sometime between then and today. If you try the link now (http://pol.moveon.org/petraeus.htm) it goes to MoveOn’s default page.

Plus, from Michael Barone: President Obama took command. And this: “Incidentally, the appointment of Petraeus to replace McChrystal was recommended yesterday by the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol. Does the president read the Weekly Standard’s The Blog?” Better that than some other blogs he’s taken direction from . . . .

FINALLY: MoveOn Scrubs “General Betray Us” Page From Website. Have you noticed how these people are always airbrushing? It’s kind of an admission that their stuff won’t sell if they tell the truth. . . .

"Clearly, this isn't the Barack Obama any of us swooned for during the election," offered Peggy Noonan. "As a candidate he was fresh, intellectual, and serious. Instead, as president, he has proven to be naive, detached and aloof. Nostradamus himself could not have predicted such an astonishing 180 degree transformation."

"Indeed, how could anyone?" added Brooks. "The fellow was a success at everything he had ever attempted -- being ethnically interesting, going to Harvard, getting elected, or writing autobiographies about being ethnically interesting and going to Harvard. It was simply inconceivable that there was a task he could actually fail at. I am forced to conclude his Harvard credentials may be a sham."

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Did McChrystal Want To Get Fired? Maybe.

The media, mainstream and alternative, are all abuzz about the probable firing of General Stanley McChrystal. He is accused of making statements that the Washington Post called “inflammatory.” Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that McChrystal of "made a significant mistake and exercised poor judgment." It seems to me that someone making a significant mistake and exercising poor judgment should not be in charge of the war in Afghanistan. So why did this General do this? The easy answer is that he’s a loose cannon. I’ll suggest a different explanation.

Let’s say you are a General who’s been given charge of a war but that you don’t think you can win (We are losing the Afghan war. ) given the level of support from the Commander in Chief. Despite the claim that Obama gave McChrystal everything he wanted, that’s a breathtakingly big lie. Remember Obama’s dithering after McChrystal sent in his battle plan? In fact, McChrystal’s request for troops was scaled back by some 33%. Some are saying that the decisions to expose our troops to greater risk by rules of engagement that prevent artillery and air support to avoid civilian casualties are White House initiatives. And these orders are increasing casualties, getting our troops killed, and angering the troops on the ground.

So you see yourself a military commander being given the role of loser. And you don’t want to be saddled with that title. You don’t want to be known as the next General William Westmoreland who was the top US commander in Viet Nam and is given blame for the loss. There are only so many Robert E. Lees, and McChrystal has not won any battles like Chancellorsville or Fredericksburg.

How do you avoid being Westmorelanded? Well, the easiest way is to be openly disrespectful to your superiors. On Fox New Special Report Mara Liasson called McChrystal’s statements “breathtakingly dumb.” Do you not get to be a full General by being breathtakingly dumb. Not in today’s Army full of perfumed princes. So if you're McChrystal how do you get out?

You can’t quit (being called a quitter is worse than being a loser) . But you can get yourself fired.

And so he did.

Before you scoff, another top leader managed to get himself fired recently, to his benefit. I was reading MarketWatch today and ran across this interesting article: BP CEO may be trying to get fired, really

So why would an intelligent man (he has a Ph.D. and has worked at BP for 28 years) make such a bonehead move as to take the weekend off to go boating?

There's one explanation that makes sense. Yes, he's actually trying to get fired. It's not as crazy as it sounds; I have data to back it up.

I've looked through the fine print of Hayward's compensation terms at BP (BP 29.57, -0.11, -0.37%) , and I've found something remarkable: He doesn't have much financial incentive to stick around anymore. Indeed, he may do better if he manages to get himself fired.

If Hayward is kicked out by the board -- so long as it is not for actual malfeasance -- he'll get a payoff of about $1.5 million, or one year's basic salary. That's just the minimum. He'll probably get more.

In my long experience following British company boardrooms, rarely have I seen chief executives get only the minimum salary. Even when they were utterly incompetent and were absolutely loathed by everybody. Even when they actually quit, and so by rights should have received nothing at all.

If Hayward gets kicked out, he'll also walk away with a generous pension entitlement of nearly $900,000 a year.

To jaded American eyes, these figures may not seem that large. But that's only because we have become inured to the wholesale larceny of U.S. executive pay. We forget that the United States is to boardroom looting what Nigeria is to email scams -- the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. No one else comes close.

In the rest of the world, including Great Britain, a $1.5 million payoff and pension of $900,000 a year are considered pretty good compensation for getting fired

Tony Hayward was not interested in public humiliation for the benefit of the cretins on Congress. No one, in my opinion, can be paid enough to do that.

If you can’t simply walk away from a task that you can’t accomplish – and let’s face it, neither Hayward or McChrystal are anything other than sacrificial lambs being led to the slaughter – get someone to fire you. Hayward did it by going to a sailboat race. McChrystal did it in an interview with Rolling Stone.

I would hate to be a General with a record for winning wars right now. Lots of top brass are looking through their past to see if they can feel reporters dirt on themselves so they won’t be Obama’s next scapegoat.

Given the general lawlessness of the Obama administration, we wonder about the effect of this injunction ... will Team Obama obey they judge?

U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman today granted a preliminary injunction, halting the moratorium. Government lawyers told Feldman that ban was based on findings in a U.S. report following the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon rig off the Louisiana coast in April.

“The court is unable to divine or fathom a relationship between the findings and the immense scope of the moratorium,” Feldman said in his 22-page decision. “The blanket moratorium, with no parameters, seems to assume that because one rig failed and although no one yet fully knows why, all companies and rigs drilling new wells over 500 feet also universally present an imminent danger.”

Some very disturbing poll news out the other day. Shocking too. It seems that some professional polling outfit named Rasmussen Reports surveyed a whole bunch of obviously subversive people.

And a minuscule two-out-of-three of them (66%) said they were at least Somewhat Angry at the nation's news media....

And as a result, as corrupt news gatekeepers, we intend to bury this bad-newsy item in the early hours of this morning so no one will find it and be able to leave snotty, all-knowing comments below about how biased "you medias are."

We would never assert that ...

To this day, many believe the media is filled with gangs of like-minded liberal journalists who march the nation's streets in large political packs (see photo above) seeking selected favorable factoids about the Harvard-like brilliance of a certain silver-tongued ex-state senator from the Democratic party whose record-breaking presidential fund-raising of $750 million showed an incredibly broad base of support among average Americans yearning for credible change and real hope following an unfortunate era of darkness that those same Americans had voted in.

And that a similar crowd of leftist-inclined journalists dutifully roams dirty alleys to collect negative info on things like the cob-webbed cognizance of some old Republican codger from Arizona who didn't use a BlackBerry and liked the Beach Boys.

Oh, and his loopy choice of a female GOP running mate who'd been elected governor of the nation's largest state. Some political paranoids saw a double standard just because those medias daily chronicled Sarah Palin's clothing, shoe color and hairstyle without equal attention to the boring suits and lack of hair of her opponent, Amtrak's most famous customer.

According to the new Rasmussen survey, 48% of Americans believe that intelligent, though liberal reporters are trying to help President Obama pass his amazing agenda whenever they write or talk about the handsome, basketball-playing father of two lovely young daughters with the cutest black dog with a name made out of the president's initials.

Joe Barton was right In the 18 months of the Obama Presidency the seizure of private property by the regime has become a regular event. And in each case, it was done with the approval of the news media, (note how the Washington Post handles it) the group that Rush Limbaugh rightly calls "The State Controlled Media." More on that later.

In our times, American democracy is being dismantled, piece by piece, before our very eyes by the current administration in Washington, and few people seem to be concerned about it.

The president's poll numbers are going down because increasing numbers of people disagree with particular policies of his, but the damage being done to the fundamental structure of this nation goes far beyond particular counterproductive policies.

Just where in the Constitution of the United States does it say that a president has the authority to extract vast sums of money from a private enterprise and distribute it as he sees fit to whomever he deems worthy of compensation? Nowhere.

And yet that is precisely what is happening with a $20 billion fund to be provided by BP to compensate people harmed by their oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Many among the public and in the media may think that the issue is simply whether BP's oil spill has damaged many people, who ought to be compensated.

But our government is supposed to be "a government of laws and not of men."

If our laws and our institutions determine that BP ought to pay $20 billion — or $50 billion or $100 billion — then so be it.

But the Constitution says that private property is not to be confiscated by the government without "due process of law."

The point Sowell makes is that the President is assuming the powers of a dictator while the press cheers him on and demonizes those who point this out. Take as an example this Ben Sargent editorial cartoon found in today's Virginian Pilot. The editors use it to demonize those who resist illegal and unconstitutional acts by mocking them as puppets of the oil companies rather than brave supporters of the rule of law.

Note the similarity to this editorial cartoon from Der Stuermer. Both are designed to incite hatred, to demonize the opposition.

Caption: Why, for what purpose is the blood flowing?

Behind the scenes, the Jew grins.

That makes the answer clear:

They bleed for the Jews.

Sowell end with this:

The man appointed by President Obama to dispense BP's money as the administration sees fit, to whomever it sees fit, is only the latest in a long line of presidentially appointed "czars" controlling different parts of the economy, without even having to be confirmed by the Senate, as Cabinet members are.

Those who cannot see beyond the immediate events to the issues of arbitrary power — vs. the rule of law and the preservation of freedom — are the "useful idiots" of our time. But useful to whom?

The MFM is still in love with their creation. To them Obama makes the occasional mistake, but the threat to democracy is ridiculed and we are told we're paranoid extremists. But for the rest of America the Frankenstein's monster that they have created is becoming more and more clear; the focus is sharper. Joe Barton had the courage to tell the truth, and the truth is never welcome to friends of dictators and thieves.

Monday, June 21, 2010

Voters thought they were voting for change. Obama just wanted a great job.

There are two trains of thought about Obama’s job performance. Those who think that he’s doing a good job are in a small and shrinking minority. That leaves the majority who are either of the opinion that he’s in over his head (a majority of voters) and those who are unhappy that he’s not socializing the nation fast enough (a small Kossite minority).

But what if everyone is wrong about Obama’s reason for running for President? What if the reason he wanted the job is that it’s got great perks? What if he wanted the Presidency for the same reason that Jeff Immelt wanted to run GE: because that job has the best salary, the biggest benefits and he gets to decide who rides on the company jets?

Let’s examine the Obama record. He gets elected and he gets to live in a great house with lots of servants that he doesn’t have to pay for. Michelle alone has 26 servants.

His private plane is part of a fleet that includes a luxuriously appointed 747 that he doesn't have to pay for.

He gets to party with heads of state where the food is prepared by internationally famous chefs and the Wagu beef is paid for by someone else.

When he wants to go on a date night with his wife they stop traffic and clear the streets all at someone else’s expense.

While the regular people are losing their jobs and homes, he gets to go golfing and see baseball games.

When he’s ready to leave after either four or eight years his retirement is paid for by the government and exceeds a million dollars a year.

Let’s face it, Obama’s got a great gig. He’s got job security for four years and even if he gets fired at the end, he never has to worry about working again.

Keep this in mind when you consider that before this he was a community organizer with a piss poor income, a state legislature who voted “present” more than any other way. He was a part of the Chicago political machine. And after a few months as a senator, Obama caught the brass ring of the Peter Principal and he’s making out like a bandit. And if you’re suffering, that’s just too bad. Look at all the people in Chicago who have gotten exactly nothing in return for supporting the Obama style of political corruption.

There is another problem for the Democrats: I don’t think Obama cares much about a midterm correction for reasons other than his own narcissism. One, he already is a laureate and post-presidential historical figure. If Bill Clinton or Al Gore is any guide, he can make a billion or two sermonizing and philosophizing for the next forty years. If Jimmy Carter can create an empire of self-absorption, any president can.

I think the presidency was always sort of a warm-up, a preparation for worldwide messiah-in-chief. It won’t be too bad a life — sort of like living in the Edwards mansion talking about marital bliss and the wretched “other America,” or Gulfstreaming into Oprah country while hawking Green, Inc. for those down in the lowlands. Once the left gets over the dismal record of Obama’s actual governance, they can afford once again to be mesmerized by four more decades of Obama’s planet healing tomfoolery. (Once Van Jones can’t do any more damage, he is a sort of left-wing cult figure.)

The nominee for the Texas’ CD-22 has publicly called for Barack Obama’s impeachment and wants to abolish the UN. Democrats would have a field day making Kesha Rogers the face of the Republican Party across the entire nation … if it weren’t for the fact that Rogers is a Democrat

The conclusion has already been written as one of the commission members lets the cat out of the bag:

Environmental activist Frances Beinecke on May 27 blogged: "We can blame BP for the disaster and we should. We can blame lack of adequate government oversight for the disaster and we should. But in the end, we also must place the blame where it originated: America's addiction to oil." And on June 3, May 27, May 22, May 18, May 4, she called for bans on drilling offshore and the Arctic.

"Even as questions persist, there is one thing I know for certain: the Gulf oil spill isn't just an accident. It's the result of a failed energy policy," Beinecke wrote on May 20.

Two other commissioners also have gone public to urge bans on drilling.

So that's it: reminiscent Jimmy Carter's malaise speech, this commission will blame Americans for their "addiction to oil." Yeah, that's it; blame Americans for wanting to drive cars, heat and cool their homes, and do it at prices that even the lowest paid worker, hell even welfare recipients, can afford. That should not be for the peons. That should be reserved for the "best and the brightest." This is why Thomas Friedman is so enthralled by Communist China. The "small people" there know their place. Besides, riding your bike to work is good exercise. And the gall of Americans wanting to live in suburbia when they should be living in densely packed urban structures near their place of employment, leaving more room for the leaders' dachas.

Although the commission has not met, there is really no reason for them to spend the time and money to do so. It would save the taxpayer millions dollars as the House Appropriations Committee has decreed that we will spend:

$7 million for scientific investigations and sampling efforts, and $10 million for civil and criminal enforcement efforts.

Certainly some hack in the White House, maybe the idiot who wrote Obama's Oval Office speech, can whip out a report based on articles and editorials from the MFM that will be every bit as credible as one this commission will produce and will not need expensive lunches and dinners paid for by the taxpayer at the toniest Washington watering holes. No one, literally no one with the IQ higher than a rock will believe any study that this commission will produce. But it will give the MFM editorial writers and reporters an officially sanctioned tool on which to base their next round of outraged editorials. Thus debasing their credibility even more as this commission will debase government sponsored "scientific inquiry." Get ready for "Climategate, the Sequel."

Suggestion for MFM people: create a macro for your word processor (I suggest "aato") to be replaced by "Americans addicted to oil." You'll be able to save yourself lots of time as you write your articles, news reports, letters to he editor and editorials. No need to thank me; I know how busy you are.

According to "experts" children should be prevented from having best friends.

Most children naturally seek close friends. In a survey of nearly 3,000 Americans ages 8 to 24 conducted last year by Harris Interactive, 94 percent said they had at least one close friend. But the classic best-friend bond — the two special pals who share secrets and exploits, who gravitate to each other on the playground and who head out the door together every day after school — signals potential trouble for school officials intent on discouraging anything that hints of exclusivity, in part because of concerns about cliques and bullying. […]

“I don’t think it’s particularly healthy for a child to rely on one friend,” said Jay Jacobs, the camp’s director. “If something goes awry, it can be devastating. It also limits a child’s ability to explore other options in the world.”

After a year and a half of Obama, nothing is drearier, or has become more familiar, than his cries of obstructionism whenever the opposition has the temerity to stand with the people and resist his consistently unpopular agenda. His pretense of a desire to work with the GOP has been so thoroughly discredited by his actions that you almost wonder why he still goes through the motions. Habit, I guess. But very few people are listening.

You know, folks like Noonan and Mort Zuckerman whining about Obama, after they praised him, pushed him, and voted for him in the face of all the evidence that led less besotted observers to see him for the empty suit he was, and is, leave me stone cold. Especially because these are the same snotty jackasses who arrogate to themselves superiority over those of us less “perceptive” folks.

Listen up, you punked, chumped boobs: We looked at Obama not through your rose colored hallucinations, but through the cold, clear spectacles of reality. None of what he’s done since has surprised us one bit. In fact, many of us, myself included, predicted it even before his coronation by people like you. Yes, it’s nice that after a year and a half of horrible examples, the truth about him is finally beginning to penetrate your skulls. But why, for the love of god, couldn’t you see it at the beginning, when it was no less obvious, but your understanding of it might have done some good?

Sunday, June 20, 2010

We are losing the Afghan war.

Reading Villainous Company today crystallized the sense that had been growing in me that Team Obama is losing the war in Afghanistan. The ingredients are there. First, the mistakes we made in Viet Nam where governments were viewed as puppets of the American government. Even Eugene Robinson, one of Obama’s most fervent supporters, sneeringly refers to Hamid Karzai .

Karzai, who seems not to have gotten the memo on how a U.S. puppet should behave, alternates between grudging cooperation and petulant defiance.

And then, of course, there is Obama and his deadline. Insurgencies take time to overcome. Sometimes decades. Obama lent his chosen General his troops for a short time. And the media his been cheering the Afghan effort . It’s such a contrast.

Compared to the constant rain of negativity about our chances of success in Iraq, recent reportage on Afghanistan has been almost impossibly positive by comparison. Media voices who blamed the lack of popular support for the GWOT upon George Bush's supposed failure to sufficiently "sell" us on that fight have been strangely silent when faced with a Commander in Chief whose efforts in that regard have been perfunctory (where they can be discerned at all).

We losing record numbers of troops killed yet the anti-war left and the MFM (but I repeat myself) note the casualty numbers and move on. No violent demonstrations. No TV shows with pictures of the dead and wounded. No stake-outs at Dover AF Base. What a difference the change in the Presidential party makes.

The problem is the Afghans. The people we are supporting in Afghanistan today are going to be there after we leave. The Taliban know who they are; they are already targets of assassination. After we leave and the Taliban are not eradicated, our supporters will be massacred.

The wise Afghani is not going to bet his life on the promises of Barack Hussein Obama. They will be making their “arrangements” and hedging their bets. Karzai has already threatened to join the insurgency. People who are viewed as puppets, pawns in Obama’s re-election campaign, won’t be playing their part in Obama’s screen play.

John Foregainst Kerry became famous for asking, "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" It is not clear to this Marine wife that our current leadership is committed to winning this fight. And if our commitment is not clear to me, how can it be clear to our allies and enemies?

Who fired Barack Obama?

Former BP CEO Tony Hayward was fired the other day so, out of a job, he decided that he would spend some time with his son and go sailing. Other people were now in charge of cleaning up the oil spill in the gulf. I must have missed the other announcement because the ultimate top dog in the oil cleanup operation, the one who demanded that someone “plug the damned hole” or he would kick ass, also took off to go golfing.

As Hayward spent time sailing with his son during this Father's Day weekend, President Obama golfed with Vice President Joe Biden.

It’s seems as though so many have forgotten that the well is still leaking profusely, even though some of the oil is being captured by BP. The MSM has adopted the Obama narrative once administration officials were able to finalize the PR maneuvers. There are two main factors that you must remember with this administration: they are PR masters and they will never let any crisis go to waste.

So, let’s get one thing straight: millions of gallons of oil continue to leak into the Gulf of Mexico. The leak has not been contained and officials cannot say for sure how many gallons continue to flow.

And what was the reason we didn’t accept the Dutch’s help within the first three days of the oil spill? Oh yes, windmills.

Meanwhile Obama is off to more important things, passing "cap and trade" and improving his golf game.

Mountains of rotting food found at a government warehouse, soaring prices and soldiers raiding wholesalers accused of hoarding: Food supply is the latest battle in President Hugo Chavez's socialist revolution.

When socialism comes to America, its proponents will vehemently deny that they are socialist, ridiculing those who say they are. They will say it’s being done to help the disadvantaged and create a necessary oversight of an out-of-control Capitalist system. In fact it’s what they are saying now. When there are no more capitalists to blame, they will be invented; history always repeats.

What did the stimulus money stimulate?

With the trillions of dollars having been spent on the “stimulus” exactly what did this money stimulate? It was not the jobs market. Unemployment is either 10% or 17% depending on who’s counting. The Obama administration promised that it would top out at 8%. They were either stupid or they lied; in my opinion they were both. But they knew what they were doing: giving money to the states to help them close gaping holes in their budgets and avoid the need to trim bloated government payrolls. The 8% number was a fake number, they had no idea what the real number would be, but like the “shovel ready jobs” pitch, it served its political purpose, getting congress to pass a bill and the public to go along.

So let’s take a survey: do you know where the jobs are that were stimulated by the so-call “stimulus” bill? Were you hired as a result of the stimulus bill?

If people who write for Newsweek are now openly dissing Obama, he has serious problems. Newsweek has been his staunchest supporter in print, a cheering section for “Obama – The God.” This is serious erosion and means that in a short time his only supporters will be Pelosi, Reed, Barney Frank and other socialists.

Saturday, June 19, 2010

“egalitarian superiors.”

If you have ever read "Animal Farm" or listened to Liberal multi-millionaires talk about their regard for the "common man" this essay - Overlords, by David Thompson - will tell youo how bad it is in Britain, and is soon going to be here if Obama, Barney Frank and their pals have their way.

You can reach out to your fellow young people and make it clear to them, that when [sic] they may not be satisfied with everything we've done -- we're not satisfied with everything we've done. The way to cure that is to give us more authority and more ability."

Steyn is the master of wordplay. In this article in Investor's Business Daily he pokes fun at poor Obama's efforts to stop the oil spill with rhetoric:

So the president has now declared war on the great BP spill — Gulf War 3! — and in this epic conflict the speechgiver-in-chief will surely be his own unmanned drone:

"I fired off a speech/But the British kept a-spillin'/Twice as many barrels as there was a month ago/I fired off a speech/But the British kept a-spillin'/Up the Mississippi from the Gulf of Mexico .. ."

Chris Matthews and the other leg-tinglers invented an Obama that doesn't exist.

Unfortunately, they're stuck with the one that does, and it will be interesting to see whether he's capable of plugging the leak in his own support.

If not, who knows what the tide might wash up?

Memo to Secretary Rodham Clinton: Do you find yourself of a quiet evening with a strange craving for chicken dinners and county fairs in Iowa and New Hampshire, maybe next summer?

Need one of those relaunch books to explain why you're getting back in the game in your country's hour of need?

Rasmussen's daily tracking report shows Obama speech increased the percentage of people who disapproved went from 41% to 45%, a loss for Obama of 4%. Those who approved went from 24% to 25%, a gain of 1%.

On the morning of the president’s speech, his Approval Index rating was -17 meaning that the initial response to the speech has cost him a net three points in the Approval Index. The number who Strongly Approve has increased one point since the speech while the number who Strongly Disapprove is up four.

Obama keeps losing more of the "mushy middle"

Among those not affiliated with either major party, 49% now Strongly Disapprove. That’s up five points since Tuesday morning (see other recent demographic highlights).

The Oval Office speech was billed as one that would mark an "inflection point." It may be one, but not the one they planned.

C3PO: “Etiquette and Protocol Robot”

A great deal of the internet is populated by C3PO wanna bees. If you ever watched a Star Wars movie (and who hasn’t) you know the shiny gold robot named C3PO whose purpose is “etiquette and protocol.” The internet has developed its own system of etiquette and protocol. One of these is an abhorrence of what is referred to as “link whoring” which is defined as encouraging people to click on your website. According to this protocol the internet virgin is supposed to sit demurely on the sidelines, knees tightly together, until she is spotted by a search engine like Google.

This phenomenon was one I recently experienced at one of my favorite sites, FreeRepublic. This is a great website on which anyone who is registered can post and thus has an incredible number of links to major and minor publications, often with excerpts to those publications. A number of years ago the site was sued by the LA times and the Washington Post for re-publishing entire articles. FreeRepublic agreed to use only short excerpts and link to the majors, thus creating more traffic for the newspapers.

“FR” as it’s known to “Freepers” gets about 250 thousand views per day, making it a big deal, and rightly so. For comparison, another very popular site for conservatives and Libertarians “Instapundit” hosted by Glenn Reynolds get about 35 thousand daily views. Reynolds is virtually nothing but links to other sites. My site, on the other hand, gets 500 to 600 viewers a day making my contribution to the national political discourse small. But at least I contribute.

I will sometimes post part of an essay or article that I have found and posted on my website, The Virginian, on FreeRepublic with a link to my website. I usually check to see if the item has already been posted on FreeRepublic (don’t want to clutter it with duplicates) and if it hasn’t I may post it if I think it has general interest. FreeRepublic has a “blogger and personal” area where bloggers and people who use Blogspot are directed by the moderators.

What some of the people who go to FreeRepublic find objectionable are links to blogs or websites that are not “big time.” Thus Michelle Malkin (90,000 hits daily) is good because she is big time, but The Virginian is not because I post a few things during the morning or evening. The NY Times may be the antithesis of what FreeRepublic stands for, but links to the NY Times abound. Google and its wholly owned subsidiary YouTube is preferred as a link rather than the same video embedded at The Virginian. Thus the C3POs, with their dated protocol and etiquette are supporting the ideological opposition at the very time when they should be supporting alternative media. By objecting to links to blogs, they are busy lining the pockets of the MFM and the Leftist at Google and YouTube.

I find it ironic that FreeRepublic , which started at a time when the alternative media was in its infancy, should now be the home of people who are trying to enforce a protocol that actually stifles the alternatives that are springing up around the internet. It should be encouraging them.

Friday, June 18, 2010

DOVER (Routers) The evacuation of British and French troops from the besieged French city of Dunkirk was halted today, over concerns that many of the private vessels that had been deployed for the task were unsafe for troop transport.

Government officials ordered all soldiers to hold their places on the harbour waterfront and beaches, and those in the water were told to hold up boarding as well, until the various fishing and pleasure vessels could be inspected by the Home Guard, to ensure that there were sufficient life vests, fire extinguishers and other safety devices on each one. Each boat will also have to be tested for leaks before it will be deemed safe for the passage across the Channel.

Yousef al Otaiba, the United Arab Emirates ambassador to the United States, invited a group of White House officials, Democratic strategists, media figures and one Republican member of the House to his home in McLean, Virginia Thursday night for an extraordinary, and extraordinarily expensive, meal followed by viewing of Game 7 of the NBA championships.

Al Otaiba brought in legendary Beverly Hills chef Wolfgang Puck for the evening, according to a report from Politico's Mike Allen, and Puck did not disappoint. Here is the menu, with wine pairings, from Allen's dispatch:

Just a relaxing evening with a few good friends. Me, I gave an open house for some clients who drank some cheap wine, diet Coke, water, and domestic beer along cheese on toothpicks, veggies and dip, meatballs made by our office manager at home and windmill cookies. But then, I was not trying to buy them off.